Thursday, 22 October 2015

To transport
people away from the misery of the present day, they need to be taken to an
unfamiliar location.This location can
be based on fantasy, or it can be based on history. The historical film was
very popular during World War Two.The
opportunity to cocoon oneself at the cinema in a world far removed from the
bomb damaged and chaotic one outside was all too tempting.Possibly the most famous example is Olivier’s
Henry V (1944) – a pageant of patriotism delivered as a deliberate morale
booster for the war weary. But there were many other films that set out to
provide a light slice of escapism via ripped bodices and glossy galloping
steeds.

You can always
pick out a popular genre in film, because sooner or later somebody will come
along and satirise it. The wartime historical escapism film got its satirical
version in a film that outstrips them all for sheer entertainment value. ‘On Approval’ (1944) stars Clive Brook,
Googie Withers, Beatrice Lillie and Roland Culver. The story is set in 1890,
and concerns two impoverished aristocratic gentlemen exploring the possibility
of marriage to two wealthy widows. There
are shades of Oscar Wilde in some of the witty one-liners, while Withers and
Lillie are hilariously sharp as two women with modern values living in an old
fashioned world.

Googie Withers by @aitchteee

I can honestly say that
this is one of the funniest films that I have ever seen, and I have to thank
@MissElvey on Twitter for recommending this to me.The opening scenes, which serve to introduce
the film, are both achingly funny and informative. These scenes are voiced over by E.V.H. Emmett,
that familiar voice from newsreels and Carry on Cleo. We begin with scenes of
war, of guns being fired from ships.Emmett suggests that we leave these behind and go back to 1939, when
everyone was enjoying themselves.Scenes
then follow of noisy motorbike races, watersports and a countryside littered by
hikers. No so peaceful in 1939 either then was it? Emmett then suggests that we
go back even further, to Grandmamma’s day, the 1890s.A time when ladies dressed demurely and knew
their place; a time when entertainment consisted of sing- songs at the piano,
needlework and cricket. And so the story begins, with Brook’s Duke of Bristol
being invited to a party at his own London townhouse, which he has had to rent
out to Withers’ American heiress due to chronic lack of funds.

Why begin the
film with this direct comparison between life in the 1940s and the 1890s? This is where it sets its stall out as a
satire. With brilliant use of facial expression and knowing exaggeration, it
reminds the audience – who was perhaps only the week before spellbound by
Phyllis Calvert in ‘Fanny By Gaslight’ – that the past wasn’t all melodrama. On
the whole, we are told, to be a woman in the 1890s was terribly dull. All the strict social conventions kept
everyone trapped in a boring and repetitive life. The story shows that only the monied people
(irrespective of class) had any kind of freedom; but even then they could be
held to ransom by servants who morally disapproved of their actions.

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Despite its
sending up all of the morale boosting historical themed films, there is a hint
of it in ‘On Approval’. I found it to be something of a feminist film, patently
demonstrating to women just how far they had progressed over the previous 50
years. There seems to be an underlying message to women in the audience that
despite war, they now had more control over their lives and more freedom – to
express themselves through their leisure and their dress. “Let us keep moving forward” it hints “away
from forces that would stamp on our ability to choose.”

The film was
released as preparations were being made for D Day. Surely it must have given
viewers a breath of that second wind that they now needed to secure freedom and
a better future; to remove the need to look for a past that probably never
existed anyway.

Monday, 5 October 2015

‘The Navy
Lark’ was a radio comedy series of the type that was very popular in the mid 20th
century. Like ‘The Goons’, ‘Round the
Horne’, ‘Hancock’s Half Hour’ and many others it was a weekly dose of familiar
characters and catchphrases which audiences couldn’t get enough of. These programmes launched careers back then,
and spawned other projects too. Hancock, for example was transferred to
television. It is not so well known that
‘The Navy Lark’ got its own film, which arrived quite early on in its lifetime.
Having seen it, it’s not surprising
that it isn’t listed among the classics of British cinema. But its sheer daftness was enough to brighten
up my afternoon – well, how can you not smile at Leslie Phillips?

Well hello! By @aitchteee

Aside from the
fruity Mr Phillips, most of the radio show favourites didn’t make it to the
screen – perhaps the actors read the script first! The other screen stars are
Cecil Parker and Ronald Shiner – veterans who make up for the lack of Pertwee
or Barker. The rather far-fetched storyline is as follows – the Larkees are
based on a fictional island in the English Channel.They are supposed to be clearing the area of
World War Two mines; but instead they are taking advantage of the laid-back
lifestyle to spend their days fishing, womanising and dealing in black market
goods.All this is put in jeopardy when
an ambitious officer in Portsmouth works out that no mines were ever laid in
that part of the Channel anyway.He
decides to pay them a visit to begin the process of shutting their operations
down. Faced with a future of actual work, the Larkees come up with all kinds of
schemes to thwart the plans from Portsmouth. This culminates in a faked native
uprising complete with pretend battles.It’s all harmless fun, and I began musing on just how far-fetched the basic
plot was.The film was made in 1959, 14
years after the end of the war, so I wondered about the idea of having mine
detection units still in place.Surely
they’d all been cleared up by then? Was this a daft joke, or a genuine possibility?
None of my history books touch on naval warfare, so I turned to the Google
search box.

If any mine
clearing units like this were still in place in the 1950s, I could find no
trace of them. However, I did find some interesting snippets of information. Firstly, as late as the mid 1950s, relics of
the war at sea were still being cleared away because the UK lent Denmark a
minesweeper to go and help clear up their coastline. Secondly, it would appear that mines dating
from the 1940s do still occasionally pose a danger to shipping. As late as 2007, cross Channel ferry services
were disrupted due to the discovery of an old device. These mines were built to
withstand stormy seas, and they did move around – so on consideration it is
unsurprising that some proved difficult to find and are still primed and ready
to go off.

I wouldn’t
rely on this film to tell me anything about the navy or the Channel Islands. But it did send me on a little journey of
discovery about how the problems of war didn’t just go away in 1945.

My short story, ‘Amphitrite’ touches on
the dismantling of mines on British beaches after World War Two. It’s available in my book ‘Athene and Other
Stories’ on Amazon.